CIRCUS
Days after we had travelled east of Eden
we invented clowning and slapstick,
juggling and tumbling, magic and music,
and idleness to ease our banishment
from Paradise. So, for ninety minutes,
in this rare and aerial space of changelings
and kaleidoscopes, we watch acrobats
and clowns, conjurors and knife throwers turn back
the epochs as if pages in a book.
Like a sudden rush of snare drums, a brief
and heavy shower accompanies
the finale – but we emerge from the big top
into that special freshness after rain.
The church bell is tolling for evensong.
As if there were no sin, house martins
swerve and bank and twitter.
Clive Watkins
August 28, 2020An attractively oblique myth-poem, David. I like the way the simile of the snare drums connects the real world of the circus tent (with its theatrical goings-on) and the real world outside the big top, marked now by ‘that special freshness after rain’. The house-martins’ agile and, it may be, acrobatic flight and their shrill twittering seem to deny what the opening clause of the last sentence nonetheless asserts – that there is indeed sin in the world. And so we are back at the start of the poem: the invention of ‘clowning and slapstick’ in the days following Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden.
John Huddart
September 1, 2020As usual, an inspiring collection. How you make all our hearts beat stronger! Your collection of comments this month says it all. We are drunk on your outpourings.